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This is appropriately titled "Glacier Carnage"...

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

newtboy says...

I'll just say I must expect if you're so certain, you must put your money where your mouth is, and are looking seriously into buying as much beach front property in Vanuatu as possible. Your mind is made up that there's no issue of ocean warming, rising, and/or acidification, so of course you will be taking advantage of those islanders that have been 'tricked' by the climate change frauds (oh, and also tricked by that water in their homes, the loss of snails, shellfish, fish, and the destruction of their reefs), and you'll be buying their properties at reduced rates, because the ocean rising is a fraud and you'll make a mint when everyone sees the 'truth' in 30 years...right? I have put my money where my mouth is, I have solar, I grow (most of) my own food, and I'm building a water catchment system.
Pay attention to what the scientists say, yes...but don't put too much stake in any single statement by any single group. Take the science as a whole, discard the crazed outliers, then examine and compare the remainder. After doing that, I always find that things are getting worse faster than nearly any study suggested it would, certainly more than the public 'consensus', in numerous ways that often re-enforce each other, and in ways that often were hidden under older study methods (such as the Greenland ice sheet, which is not only moving far faster than expected, but is also losing density much faster than expected, meaning older methods of measuring glaciers by size no longer apply...or the heating of the ocean where so much heat was 'hidden' in deep water, not found until recently so claimed to not exist, or the theory that certain diatoms might do better in acidic CO2 saturated water, but they found that that was wrong because in reality low light due to turbidity more than erased any positive effect.)

Today, one can find a 'study' to show anything one wishes, complete with scientists, data, conclusions, and affluent backers. The study you quote actually claimed that there will not be a loss of ice cover in Greenland and/or Antarctica, contrary to current conditions where there already IS loss of ice cover and it's accelerating exponentially. If you wish to believe that simply slowing the rate at which we increase the amount of CO2 we create by 2050 is going to solve the issues, (issues that will be totally disastrous by then by most estimations, for tens of millions it already IS disastrous) I've got some swamp land to sell you in Florida. The same goes for if you believe China and India are going to DECREASE their emissions. To date, they have done nothing but ignore their own additions to climate change as far as their energy production is concerned, they have not put extra money into 'clean' energy, but instead consistently go for the cheap, but dirty methods. There's no reason to believe this will change in the next 35 years as they ramp up their energy use to first world levels, that goes double if people are convinced (as you seem to be) that there's really no big problem with the climate, nothing to worry about, and any small inconvenience will be solved by technology and intelligent governments doing the right thing, even though it's the more expensive thing that they normally avoid like the plague. Unfortunately, history does not show that this is how people or governments operate.

bcglorf said:

pay attention to the what the scientists say that study this issue.
Thank you, that's been exactly my point in linking to the IPCC about 5-6 times already and more than a dozen other peer reviewed articles on the subject.
The consequences are serious.
Serious is different than catastrophic so depending on the definition of serious I'd agree. If we start to significantly reduce our emissions by about 2050 we track with the IPCC 4.5 scenario which is manageable through mitigation measures, accelerating emissions still to 2100 though is madness.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@newtboy

#1 and #2, fine, if you won't go there to read it's now pasted in full for you:
Arctic tundra soils serve as potentially important but poorly understood sinks of atmospheric methane (CH4), a powerful greenhouse gas1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Numerical simulations project a net increase in methane consumption in soils in high northern latitudes as a consequence of warming in the past few decades3, 6. Advances have been made in quantifying hotspots of methane emissions in Arctic wetlands7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear. Here, we present measurements of rates of methane consumption in different vegetation types within the Zackenberg Valley in northeast Greenland over a full growing season. Field measurements show methane uptake in all non-water-saturated landforms studied, with seasonal averages of − 8.3 ± 3.7 μmol CH4 m−2 h−1 in dry tundra and − 3.1 ± 1.6 μmol CH4 m−2 h−1 in moist tundra. The fluxes were sensitive to temperature, with methane uptake increasing with increasing temperatures. We extrapolate our measurements and published measurements from wetlands with the help of remote-sensing land-cover classification using nine Landsat scenes. We conclude that the ice-free area of northeast Greenland acts as a net sink of atmospheric methane, and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under future warmer climatic conditions.

#3, regardless of if it make's sense to you, and regardless of if it means a 10C warming by 2100, the IPCC scientists collaborative summary says it anyways. If you want to claim otherwise it's you opposing the science to make things seem worse than they are, not me.

#4, To tell them those things would sound like this. The IPCC current best estimates from climate models project 2100 to be 1.5C warmer than 2000. This has already resulted in 2000 being 0.8C warmer than 1900. Summer arctic sea ice extent has retreating significantly is the biggest current impact. By 2100 it is deemed extremely unlikely that the Greenland and Antarctic iccesheets will have meaningfully reduced and there is medium confidence that the warming will actually expand Antarctic ice cover owing to increased precipitation from the region. That's the results and expectations to be passed on from the 5th report from an international collaboration of scientists. Whether that fits your world view or not doesn't matter to the scientific evidence those views are founded on and supported by.

You said the ocean's may be unfishable in 20 years, and the best support you came up with was a news article quote claiming that by 2040 most of the Arctic would be too acidic for Shell forming fish. Cherry picked by the news article that also earlier noted that was dependent on CO2 concentrations exceeding 1000ppm in 2100, and even that some forms of plankton under study actually faired better in higher acidity in some case. In a news article that also noted that the uneven distribution of acidity makes predicting the effects very challenging. If news articles count as evidence I then want to claim we'll have working fusion power to convert to in 5 years time from Lockheed Martin. I'll agree with your news post on one count, the world they talk about, where CO2 emissions continue accelerating year on year, even by 2100, is bad. It's also a bit hard to fathom with electric cars just around the corner, and if not solar and wind, fusion sometime before then too, that we'll still be using anywhere near today's emissions let alone still accelerating our use.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
And you link to a blog, and a blog that provides exactly zero references to any scientific sources for the claim. Better yet, even the blog does NOT claim that the access to water will be limited because of climate change, the blog even mentions multiple times how other forms of pollution are destroying huge amounts of fresh water(again with zero attributions).

Here's the IPCC best estimates for 2100 impacts regionally:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter14_FINAL.pdf

You'll find it's a largely mixed bag if you can be bothered to read what the actual scientists are predicting. Just bare in mind they regularly note that climate models still have a lot of challenges with accurate regional estimates. I guess your blogger isn't hindered by such problems though. If you don't want to bother I'll summarize for you and note they observe a mixed bag of increased precipitation in some regions, notably monsoons generally increasing, and other areas lowering, but it's all no higher than at medium confidences. But hey, why should uncertainty about 2100 prevent us from panicking today about more than half the world losing their drinking water in 10 years. I'll make you a deal, in ten years we can come back to this thread and see whether or not climate change has cause 2/3 of the world to lose their drinking water already or not. I'm pretty confident on this one.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
Lost 50% since 2005? That'd be scary, oh wait, you heard that from the same blog you say? I've got a hunch maybe they aren't being straight with you...
Here are a pair of links I found in google scholar to scientific articles on the Himalaya's glaciers:
http://cires1.colorado.edu/~braup/himalaya/Science13Nov2009.pdf
I you can't be bothered to read:
Claims reported in the popular press that Siachin has shrunk as much as 50% are simply wrong, says Riana, whose report notes that the glacier has "not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years" Which looks likely that your blogger found a popular press piece about that single glacier and then went off as though it were fact, and across the entire mountain range .

http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/glaciers%20and%20climate.pdf
Here's another article noting that since 1962 Himalayan glacier reduction is actually about 21%.

If you go back and read the IPCC links I gave earlier you can also find many of the regional rivers and glaciers in India/East China are very dependent on monsoons and will persist as long as monsoons do. Which the IPCC additionally notes are expected to, on the whole, actually increase through 2100 warming.

I've stated before up thread that things are warming and we are the major contribution, but merely differed from your position be also observing the best evidence science has for predictions isn't catastrophic. That is compounded by high uncertainties, notably that TOA energy levels are still not able to be predicted well. The good news there is the latest IPCC estimated temps exceed the observed trends of both temperature and TOA imbalance, so there's reason for optimism. That's obviously not license for recklessly carrying on our merry way, as I've noted a couple times already about roads away from emissions that we are going to adopt one way or another long before 2100.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

newtboy says...

OK
#1. Your study quote which said no mechanism had been discovered.
#2. "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear."...LOCATION UNCLEAR MEANS NOT FOUND.
#3...this does not make sense, "this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks" is self contradictory, since many terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks are NOT moderate...depending on the definition of "moderate". If less than 10 deg C is moderate, then they're right.
#4. You can tell them 98%+ of scientists in the field of climatology say side effects of industry/technology will cause "X" at a minimum in 100 years, and it has already caused "Y" (warming, weather changes, ocean acidification, environmental pollution, rising cancer rates, water shortages, other indisputable factors), send him back with proof of those effects, and I think same result..."no thanks".

I misunderstood I guess. If you did that, he would just be in a rubber room for claiming to be a time traveler, not seen as a visionary. ;-) If he could offer proof of the time travel, the state of the planet, and the environmental trends showing every issue is seemingly getting worse leading to cluster f*ck, it would not be a hard sell in the least, IMO. At least not to people with an IQ over 90. You don't have to abandon all those things (coal, yes), you would just have to design them better. Electric cars were often the norm before Ford in towns. Planes might be electric dirigibles, and satellites might be put in orbit by rail guns.
If you don't think 1/3 of the planet's population (a reasonable guess if water shortages continue the current trend) being migrant doesn't warrant 'panic' (which I never suggested, I will say it warrants concern even by those in the '1st' world) then I don't know what to tell you.
Citations:
#1. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years (I was off by 5 years) at current acidification rates.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/climate-change-threatens-crucial-marine-algae/
"By 2040, most of the Arctic Ocean will be too acidic for shell- forming species including most plankton. Significant areas of the Antarctic Ocean will be similarly affected, oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK previously told IPS."

#2. by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/interesting-water-facts/
"Unless we change our ways, two-thirds of the world’s population will face water scarcity by 2025"

#3. Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/interesting-water-facts/
"Rapid melting will reduce the Tibetan glaciers by 50 percent every decade, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences
More than two-thirds of Chinese cities face water shortages"

bcglorf said:

@newtboy,

How about great big citation needed. Your making a lot of assertions and about zero references to back anything, your just one step shy of claiming because I say so as your proof.

The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap.
Citation required.

your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets
The abstract is only a paragraph and the charliem gave the link up thread, just go and read it already, they did numerical estimates AFTER going in and directly measuring the actual affects. And I must additionally add, it's not MY link but was instead the ONLY claimed evidence in thread of your catastrophic methane release.

Let me start us off, the IPCC once again summarizes your problem as follows:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

There are caveats prior to the above quote about unknowns and uncertainty and the possibility the affects will be less or more, but the consensus is, don't panic. Like I said.

As for bringing that person from 1915 in today, you don't get to tell them the environment will be destroyed 100 years from 2015 in the year 2100 as a result. You have to prove that first, which you have merely asserted, not proven. On the other hand, my evidence was bringing our visitor from the past showing them the year 2015, and the consequences of rising global temperatures by 0.8C since his time in 1915. Then I say we ask him if abandoning coal power, airplanes, satellites, and cars to prevent that warming is a better alternate future he should go back and sell the people of 1915 on. I'm thinking that's gonna be a hard sell. I'm additionally pointing out that the IPCC projections for the next 100 years is 1.5C warmer than today, so we'll be going up by 1.5 instead of the 0.8 our visitor from the past had to choose. The trick is, I don't see how you can claim that panic should be the natural and clear response. You need a lot more evidence, which as stated above you've failed to provide, and more over what you've posited is contrary to the science as presented by researchers like those at the IPCC.

It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates.
citation needed.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
citation needed, and you need to tie it to human CO2 and not human guns and violence creating the misery.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
citation needed

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions...
, says you. If you don't use any evidence to refute me it's still called your opinion...

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@newtboy,

How about great big citation needed. Your making a lot of assertions and about zero references to back anything, your just one step shy of claiming because I say so as your proof.

The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap.
Citation required.

your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets
The abstract is only a paragraph and the charliem gave the link up thread, just go and read it already, they did numerical estimates AFTER going in and directly measuring the actual affects. And I must additionally add, it's not MY link but was instead the ONLY claimed evidence in thread of your catastrophic methane release.

Let me start us off, the IPCC once again summarizes your problem as follows:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

There are caveats prior to the above quote about unknowns and uncertainty and the possibility the affects will be less or more, but the consensus is, don't panic. Like I said.

As for bringing that person from 1915 in today, you don't get to tell them the environment will be destroyed 100 years from 2015 in the year 2100 as a result. You have to prove that first, which you have merely asserted, not proven. On the other hand, my evidence was bringing our visitor from the past showing them the year 2015, and the consequences of rising global temperatures by 0.8C since his time in 1915. Then I say we ask him if abandoning coal power, airplanes, satellites, and cars to prevent that warming is a better alternate future he should go back and sell the people of 1915 on. I'm thinking that's gonna be a hard sell. I'm additionally pointing out that the IPCC projections for the next 100 years is 1.5C warmer than today, so we'll be going up by 1.5 instead of the 0.8 our visitor from the past had to choose. The trick is, I don't see how you can claim that panic should be the natural and clear response. You need a lot more evidence, which as stated above you've failed to provide, and more over what you've posited is contrary to the science as presented by researchers like those at the IPCC.

It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates.
citation needed.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
citation needed, and you need to tie it to human CO2 and not human guns and violence creating the misery.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
citation needed

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions...
, says you. If you don't use any evidence to refute me it's still called your opinion...

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

newtboy says...

Perhaps in some minor 'unknown' areas for unknown reasons that could be true, but overall it's far from true. The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap. You and they don't even mention the mechanism that traps methane at all, the methane being released is from bacteria eating thawed organic material.

EDIT: Actually, your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets"...it said "numerical simulations predict" they exist, "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear." This means places where methane capture outpaces release, or happens at all, have not been found-'location unclear'.

OK, you did say 'if we magically remove all the CO2 we've ever produced' (ignoring methane and other greenhouse gasses) in your second post. I missed the 'magic removal' part. My mistake, but that makes it a silly argument since we can't do magic. If we could, there would be no problem....and if I crapped diamonds I would be rich.

Well, in the context of talking to a person from 1912, if you explained to them that the 'progress' (by which I guess you mean population explosion and technical advancements) of the last century comes at the cost of the environment, nature, and may destroy the planet over the next century (at least for human survival), I would bet anyone with an IQ of 90+ will say 'selling (or even gambling) our permanent future for temporary industrial progress is a terrible idea, no thanks'.

Well, you must see that some of that great 'food production' is actually corn and grain for livestock, bio fuels, palm oils, etc., not human food stuffs. In order to make that 'food', forests are destroyed, removing entire eco systems that provided 'bush taco' (natural foods) which wasn't included in the equations about overall food production. Food HARVESTS of natural foods have declined rapidly worldwide, just look at the ocean. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates. Kill the base of the food web, and the web falls apart. It's a rare place today that can support a human population without industrial agriculture and food importation, both of which have failed to solve starvation issues to date.

You can only be ignoring that data about it being catastrophic. I referenced it earlier. Just to mention ONE way, by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage. In most cases, there's absolutely no way to fix this. For instance, Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade, and that rate is expected to continue to accelerate. With no water, industrial agriculture fails instantly, and people die in 3 days or so. There's NO solution for this disaster, not a plan, not an idea, nothing. There are already immigration problems worldwide, how to solve that when the immigration increases exponentially everywhere?

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions, and insistence that, contrary to all human history and all scientific evidence, this time humans will find and implement a working solution to the problem in time (already too late IMO) that's not worse than the problem was, and so we should not be bothered by the coming massive shortages and upheaval that comes with them, because somehow in that upheaval we'll find and implement massive global solutions to currently insurmountable issues. We can't even slow down the rate of increase in CO2 emissions, it's unbelievable to think we'll turn that to a negative number in 20-30 years even if the tech is invented (which still leaves us in Mad Max times at best, IMO), much more so to think we could erase 100 years of emissions in that time. EDIT:...and I find that kind of dangerous unrealistic suggestion insulting.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

newtboy says...

There MUST be a miswording there, or bold faced, outright lie.
As temperatures rise, frozen underwater methane (methyl hydrate)is melted and RELEASED, not trapped. Not only that, as the ice on land disappears, it exposes permafrost that, as it melts, also emits methane. It's been happening for a while now, and is accelerating. Methane is FAR more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2, for longer times, so once this cycle takes off, we can expect exponential increase in the temperature rise.
It's POSITIVE feedback loop, not a negative one.
EDIT: Perhaps they mean when the Atlantic currents are disrupted and the lower ocean becomes colder...at that point it will have the ability to store more methane, but not the ability to capture it from the atmosphere since the upper ocean will be far warmer.
As for your misunderstanding of CO2, removing all CO2 production tomorrow won't remove any in the atmosphere, it will be there for quite some time before it could be absorbed in the ocean/forests, and that time period extends daily as the ocean becomes more acidic (making it impossible for diatoms to use the CO2 to make their shells) and the forests are removed. Once the ocean stops absorbing CO2, even the amount naturally created will be far too much for the atmosphere, and temps/CO2 levels will still rise even if we produce absolutely none. The tipping point was in the 70s-80s when we could have stopped CO2 production and made a difference. Now, it's too late unless we find a way to trap CO2 and keep it trapped. The systems are quite slow to react.
As for people "thriving", that's just ridiculous. There's been a food shortage world wide for quite some time now. The water shortage is becoming a bigger threat, and that's expected to increase exponentially as glaciers, snow packs, and aquifers rapidly disappear. Ocean harvests have drastically decreased, as have natural foods. We are thriving in the same way locusts 'thrive' when they swarm...but note that 99.9% of them die of starvation in the end.

bcglorf said:

Wait, wait, wait

@charliem,

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this as I can't get to the full body of the article you linked for methane, but here's the concluding statement from the abstract:
We conclude that the ice-free area of northeast Greenland acts as a net sink of atmospheric methane, and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under future warmer climatic conditions.

Now, unless there is a huge nuanced wording that I'm missing, sinks in this context are things that absorb something. A methane sink is something that absorbs methane. More over, if the sink is enhanced by warming, that means it will absorb MORE methane the warmer it gets. So it's actually the opposite of your claim and is actually a negative feedback mechanism as methane is a greenhouse gas and removing it as things warmers and releasing it as things cool is the definition of a negative feedback.

Skier Falls Into Crevasse In Swiss Alps

chicchorea (Member Profile)

Should We Colonize Venus Instead of Mars?

jmd says...

Uhmm.. there is one reason we are targeting mars and not venus.. water. We are not colonizing anything if we have to bring our own water. Mars will not be a colony until we find the glaciers we are looking for.

Chasing Ice - Largest Calving Event Ever Caught On Film

Sarzy (Member Profile)

Doubt - How Deniers Win

bcglorf says...

This is getting old.
If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.
I point out that historically you are wrong. I cite specific examples illustrating that you are wrong. Still you come back insisting that somehow men with guns can't starve people out who want to farm. That somehow the mass starvations under Stalin, Mao, and North Korea weren't even related to the mass theft at gunpoint of farm crops and land from farmers. You insist that it's not what is today stopping farmland from productivity in places like the DRC, Liberia, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and many more. I give up.

the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today
But also
we can't get to the moon with NASA today, or get on a concord
I give up.

78% less glacier doesn't mean ...
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years

I cited the actual science from the IPCC with their own projections. You take the very, very worst of the multiple scenarios the IPCC run. Not content with that, you take the most extreme range of error within that extreme scenario. Not content with that, you then inject your PERSONAL BELIEF that even that position of science is likely to optimistic.

I give up. If you refuse to listen to fact and reason that's up to you. Just don't pretend your any better than the other side ignoring the actual science just from a different end of the spectrum.

Doubt - How Deniers Win

newtboy says...

Actually you said it's no where near time to panic. You also said the people of Kiribati are going to be washed away by a tsunami (but it never happened before in all the times they've been hit by tsunami) and not overwhelmed by sea rise (which IS what's happened to them).


You are just wrong about Texas producing more than California, we're number two in cattle production and ....
Food Facts
California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.
More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.
California is the nation's number one dairy state.
California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.
California's leading export crop is almonds.
Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.
California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.
California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions.
and if that's not enough to convince you ...
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

It is never 1 to 1 guns VS farmers in the situations you are talking about. The food gets stolen, sold, and eaten. It is not stolen and allowed to rot. If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.

I call BS, the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today. You mentioned one. They are universally agreed on (by energy companies) who have made solar farms, nuclear, wind, etc.

Ahhhh. So now you see why it's time to panic...adaptation of the tech takes time, time that we don't have to waste. If it takes 50 years to stop adding greenhouse gasses, we need to see where that leaves your children's children. Adaptation of new tech is going to happen while we are restricting consumption...it's been that way for decades (see 'car mileage requirements') so it HAS happened in the past, and is happening today...without wars.

If no one panics and no one acts, that's where we'll be if we're lucky. Those figures you linked assume we will stop rising the level of CO2 we add daily and/or keep it below a certain level...an assumption I think is wrong and ignores reality.

Um, well, yeah, 78% less glacier doesn't mean 78% less runoff, it means far more than 78% less, because of glacial dams, evaporation, and upstream use it means probably NO runoff downstream. 22% of the already scarce water won't feed India. Period.
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years, but even those numbers leave billions without water or food. That's far worse than any group ever starved by 'men with guns'.

bcglorf said:

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.

Doubt - How Deniers Win

bcglorf says...

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.



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